Shoppers in Carlisle can now donate food items to help people in their community each time they visit the Tesco.

A new collection point for the Fareshare network has been set up at the Warwick Road store.

It means that shoppers can drop off donations of long-life food during their weekly shop.

Additionally Tesco will top up customer donations by an extra 20 per cent in the form of cash donations.

The contributions will help Fareshare in its efforts to support people locally.

Tesco now have a donation point for either the Trussell Trust food bank, or for food redistribution charity FareShare at every one of its 800-plus large stores in the UK.

Katie Sadler, programme manager at FareShare, said: “Tesco is really leading the way by enabling their customers to donate food to local vulnerable communities via collection points in their stores.

"By introducing even more permanent collection points for FareShare in stores across the UK, there are more opportunities for Tesco customers to make a donation of a food item where they are able to.

"In the last year, generous Tesco customers donated the equivalent of one million meals to FareShare, and I’d like to thank every single person for their support.

“The store cupboard essential items donated through the collection points, such as tinned meat, fish and pasta, are always needed.

"Those donations mean that we have a consistent supply of food, which we have been able to redistribute to our network of charities and community organisations supporting those most in need.”

Tesco’s head of community Claire de Silva said: “Covid-19 has placed huge demands on food charities.

"FareShare has been supporting 12,000 frontline charity and community groups, while food banks in the Trussell Trust network provided a record 1.2 million food parcels during the first six months of the pandemic.

“We know that our customers want to help, now customers can now easily donate food year-round.”

Shoppers can also donate Clubcard points to the charities through the schemes website.